Left Turn at Paradise

by Thomas Shawver

  “My, how very practical,” she answered. “I take it you’ve been to the marae before, Mr. Kildare?”

  “Plenty of times, missy. I take folks up there two, maybe three times every couple of months. I’m the only one allowed in.”

  “What kind of folks?” I asked.

  “Young people, mostly.” He flashed that ghastly grin. “Girls, even. Don’t bring too many back. They like it once they get used to things.”

  “Take anyone else?”

  “If you mean the Chinks, I suppose it’s so.”

  “We heard some Chinese got lost on a glacier,” Pillow said. “Were you leading them?”

  “Not that bunch.” Then, as if he’d said too much, he added, “They was just tourists.”

  The possum trader put away the board, but the grin remained. “It’s risky goin’ off track. Plenty of folks get lost. If the fog or snow settles in they stay that way.”

  “That’s why I’ve hired you,” Hart said.

  Kildare’s mouth twitched at the corners.

  “Why you want to see that crazy place?” he asked. “Just ’cuz this lady’s a hine, you boys ain’t.”

  “I fail to see how that is any business of yours,” Pillow said archly.

  The trapper’s grin turned to a snarl and just as quickly reverted back.

  “You said five hundred.”

  When Hart pulled out a credit card, Pillow stepped between him and the counter.

  “Hold off, Adrian.”

  Hart shot an exasperated look at her.

  “Here, now,” Kildare blustered. “We have a deal.”

  “Not if Mr. Bevan and I don’t accept your terms.”

  She looked at me.

  “I’m with you,” I mouthed.

  “All right, then,” Pillow said. “We prefer to take our business elsewhere.”

  “Aye?” Kildare sneered. “And where might that be?”

  “I was recently informed that a man at the Paradise station knows the area.”

  The possum trapper’s eyes narrowed.

  “You don’t want that fella. Hard codger. Done time at Rimutaka Prison.”

  “If what you say is true about the back country”—Pillow rose to her full height to stare down at him—“this hine thinks we could use a hard man. Someone harder than you, at least.”

  Kildare hadn’t finished sputtering when Pillow stormed out of the shop to where John Pritchard leaned against his Range Rover. I was ten steps behind her and anxious to find out why she’d suddenly decided to choose an ex-con to guide us through the mountain wilderness. Daig Kildare wasn’t exactly Dudley Do-Right, but the alternative didn’t sound like much of an improvement.

  “You had better be right about this,” I heard her hiss to John. “Why didn’t you mention Tane Craddock before we left Queenstown?”

  “Trust me, you don’t want Kildare.”

  “I’ve got history with Tane,” she said, in a defeated voice.

  “He’s not a bad sort. Not anymore.”

  “It’s not so much him.”

  “I know,” he said, opening the door and climbing behind the wheel. “But it won’t hurt to spend time with your mother.”

  Chapter Eighteen

  At the Glenorchy General Store we purchased backpacks, crampons, and nylon rope among other gear to go with our anoraks and hiking boots. Following Hart’s move, I selected a waterproof Aloksak pouch to protect my journal while Pillow loaded up on three days’ worth of trail food for us.

  They were both at the counter paying for their equipment and scroggin when I quietly slipped forty dollars to an assistant in the back of the store for a seven-inch hunting knife. It seemed prudent to take certain precautions without alerting my fellow travelers.

  Heading to the pier after packing our equipment, I decided to get a rise out of Hart.

  “I haven’t properly thanked you for getting Bartow to hand over the journals. Still, it seems odd he was so complacent.”

  Hart shot me a quizzical look. “It suited us both,” he said softly.

  “Where do you think he’s headed?” I pressed. “Surely not back to Sydney.”

  “Bartow could bloody well go to Reykjavík for all I fucking care.”

  * * *

  Shortly before noon a jet boat, its 526-horsepower Chrysler engine idling like a caged tiger, arrived at the pier to take us up the meandering Dart River to Paradise Flat.

  A likable young boatman named Jeb gave instructions while handing out life preservers. Pillow sat in front, while Adrian and I settled in the middle seats. The craft had an extremely shallow draft for navigating glacial rivers no more than inches deep. Instead of a propeller, it relied on a propulsion jet—basically, a powerful water pump capable of thrusting the boat forward at remarkable speeds against the current. It was extremely maneuverable, capable of turning or stopping instantaneously with a quick pull in either direction.

  We motored slowly from the pier to enter the estuary where the river poured into the lake. Aiming the bow upstream, Jeb lowered his sunglasses, put his right hand on the accelerator, and said over his shoulder, “You folks might want to hang on.”

  Quite an understatement, as it turned out.

  I was watching sunbeams bounce off the pebbles through the clear water when the boat suddenly leapt forward with a deafening roar, shooting past sandbars and over inch-deep shallows at speeds over thirty knots. At midstream things calmed a bit while Jeb deftly negotiated the ever-shifting channels, but when a sudden pivot strewed gallons of ice-cold water on us Pillow laughed like a little girl who had never known pain or disappointment.

  Magnificent peaks spread out on either side of the broad river valley, their glaciers gleaming in the sun under a cerulean sky, but Hart didn’t seem to be enjoying the view or the exhilarating ride.

  He was obviously not happy about Pillow’s refusal to accept Kildare as our guide. But there was something different in his attitude toward me as well after I’d mentioned Bartow. Whereas before he had treated me as a respected and, more or less, equal partner in this endeavor, the Englishman now watched me warily.

  I wasn’t about to acknowledge that he’d forged Bartow’s signature at the Turnbull Library, however. Not yet, anyway. Best to let him squirm while I kept an eye out for myself.

  After nearly an hour, we arrived at a point in the river marked by a red buoy indicating the river was unnavigable beyond it. Jeb texted our arrival, then guided the craft to a pebbled bank.

  “Welcome to Paradise Flat,” he greeted us, as we climbed out. “The manager will be down soon.”

  Jeb didn’t wait for our welcoming committee. After handing us a packet of mail he’d brought for the lodge, he guided the boat downstream. The gentle breeze rustling through eucalyptus leaves was a welcome reprieve from the pounding roar of the Chrysler engine.

  A two-story pine-and-native-stone structure lay beyond the stand of trees fifty yards from the edge of the water. Next to the house was a grassy meadow where a hundred or so sheep and a dozen cattle grazed on tussock grass. The elevation quickly increased after that, leading up a thousand yards to the ridges of the Earnslaw Burn. Three miles to the north, Mount Earnslaw and its sister peaks gleamed in the afternoon sun.

  Minutes later, a hearty Hercules sporting a handlebar mustache you could hang lanterns on ambled toward us. He wore a sweat-stained cowboy hat, a brightly colored check flannel shirt, and saddle-tweed trousers fastened with a plaited leather belt. A pair of heavy leather boots added another inch or two to his solid six-foot frame. Tied around his neck was a string that held a dog whistle.

  “Greetings, folks.” Dark eyes beamed under thick beetle eyebrows. “I’m the onetime only-time Tane Craddock, the station manager here. Esme’s up in the hills chasing a goat that wandered away in the night. I’ll get you settled in.”

  Craddock took a moment to help Pillow with her pack and I heard him whisper, “Nice to see you.”

  “Wish I could say the same of you.”

&nbs
p; “We were kids.”

  “I was a kid, Tane. You were almost sixteen. Let’s not talk about it.”

  “Up to you,” he said.

  The pair moved slowly, silently away from the river, through the beech trees, on to the tussock area and toward the house. I followed at a respectful distance behind them. Hart purposely kept behind me, his eyes boring a hole in the back of my head.

  * * *

  The lodge seemed the kind of place you could settle in for a year and never draw an anxious breath. The front porch had a half dozen wicker chairs and small tables, the latter topped by wildflowers in clear glass vases. There were six bedrooms, four upstairs and two down, with a large central gathering area anchored by a stone fireplace at the north end. On the opposite side a floor-to-ceiling window looked onto the Dart’s turquoise waters and the snowcapped Humboldt Range.

  Hart and I were given rooms downstairs; Pillow took the second-floor suite. After freshening up, we gathered on the front porch, where Craddock greeted us with bottles of chilled white wine, cheese, and apples.

  The station manager retreated toward the kitchen, but Pillow, smiling a little, said, “You might as well join us.”

  He turned and shyly pulled up a chair directly opposite her.

  “She was the prettiest girl in Arrowtown,” Craddock said to Hart and me, as if she wasn’t there.

  “E mai ana,*1 but not true,” Pillow demurred. “I was tall and skinny. Clumsy as could be.”

  “She was like a thoroughbred colt, just coming into speed and grace.”

  “He called me names.”

  “Sparky.”

  “Yes, because I wore braces. The other kids called me Kahiketea*2 because of my height. Sparky wasn’t so bad, considering.”

  Craddock looked from us to her. She met his eyes with a kind of straightforwardness that made him uncomfortable.

  Now it was Hart and I who were no longer there.

  “I’ve gotten better,” he said.

  “As well you might have.” Pillow’s words sounded harsh, but her tone suggested forgiveness, even a rekindled fondness for him.

  Hart, oblivious to the drama being played before us, shifted in his chair.

  “Might you bring us another bottle, Craddock? I’d prefer a red to this pale plonk.”

  “Right away,” the big man said, getting up. “Then I’d best search for Esme. Her goat thinks it’s a tahr and took off toward Mount Richardson.”

  “What’s a tahr?” I asked, when he returned with the new bottle.

  “A Nepalese cousin to the mountain goat some idiots brought to this country a century ago. In Asia the snow leopards keep them in check, but they have no natural predators here so they multiply like rabbits and chew up our alpine plants.”

  “Can’t hunters weed them out?” Hart wanted to know.

  “They come from all over the world to try, but the beasts are incredibly fleet and sure-footed, rambling up the steepest and most isolated peaks. Hunters bag no more than five or six a season, so the Conservation Society pays me to conduct aerial ops. If I spot a herd, the pilot flies close in and I use a gun net to corral a young nanny. Then I hop out to tag her with a radio collar.”

  “ ‘Hop out’?”

  “Sure,” Craddock said. “I jump on her bulldog style from the chopper, sedate her, and put a tracking collar on the neck. It took me a while to get the hang of it, especially when the beast is on a narrow ridge with nothing but air on either side. Helps to have a steady pilot.”

  Once it became clear he wasn’t joking, I looked at Tane Craddock with added respect. “What then?”

  “I secure her to a winch connected to a wire line and the chopper hauls her to a release location close to suspected feral herds. Aircraft equipped with special location aerials monitor the ‘Judas’ nanny for six to eight months. Once a group has been located, the animals are shot from the air with a semiautomatic rifle. Not very sporting, but it’s the only way to control the pests.”

  “Do you kill the nanny who led you there, too?”

  “Yeah. She’s no use to us anymore.”

  As if in protest to this description of animal slaughter, we heard the bleat of a disgruntled billy goat.

  “Tane!” a woman shouted from the garden adjacent to the cliff. “Bring me a rope to secure Mortimer to the post. Make sure it’s a Dynex that he can’t chew apart this time.”

  “Excuse me, folks,” he said, grabbing a nylon cord from a wooden crate on the porch. “Duty calls.”

  I looked in the direction of the meadow to see the tall, angular woman who had issued the order. Mid-sixties, I figured, with silver hair hanging on either side of her face in long braids. She wore a short-billed cap, a woolen shirt, and hiking shorts that hadn’t protected her legs from being scratched while wading through the brambles.

  She issued several more orders to Craddock while she secured the animal, but it was obvious that her commands were meant to hide her nervous anticipation at seeing her estranged daughter.

  Hart and I got to our feet when she came up the steps, but Pillow remained seated, staring fixedly at her mother as if coldly studying the aging effects of the last ten years. I noticed she had pulled her collar down, exposing her neck.

  After an awkward silence, introductions were made.

  “I’m Esme,” she said, to Hart and me.

  I saw a resemblance to Cattley Middleditch, including the evidence of alcoholism in her features. She had a few wrinkles about her mouth, but the rest of her gaunt face was remarkably smooth, as if the skin had been painted to the cheekbones. Her blue eyes were large and shining, her expression pleasant and candid.

  “And what about you?” she said, addressing her daughter. “Or did London life strip you of civility?”

  “Not at all,” Pillow answered. “I’ve learned it’s easier to polish manners than reform the heart.”

  Esme stared at her daughter without expression for a moment, but when Pillow stood up she gave her a quick, motherly peck on her cheek.

  Although there was little warmth in it, it melted a sliver off the glacier between them.

  “You look well,” Esme remarked, clasping Pillow’s hand. “I’m very glad you came.”

  “Thank you, Mother.” Pillow pulled her hand ever so tactfully away. “If you don’t mind, I’m rather exhausted. I’d like to take a nap before dinner.”

  “Certainly.”

  After Pillow left for her room, Hart settled into a leather chair as if he owned the place and poured himself another glass of wine.

  Esme caught my eye and tilted her head in the direction of the back door. I followed her there.

  “Thanks for letting us share your lodge,” I told her. “I suspect your brother and John Pritchard had something to do with reuniting you with your daughter.”

  “With you heading up to Ivo’s compound, it makes sense. I doubt she agrees.”

  “Perhaps.”

  “Not a particularly good start to reconciliation,” Esme said sadly. “Cattley and John had very nice things to say about you, by the way. Let me show you my garden.”

  We went out the back door onto a gradually elevated path.

  “You were wise not to hire that beastly Kildare,” she said, as we passed through a pergola covered with yellow roses. “Knows the country up there, though.”

  “Doesn’t Craddock?”

  “Oh, sure. Tane will go up in the heli every other month or so with medical supplies and other necessities, but he’s never been allowed near the marae.”

  “If you don’t mind my asking, why did you hire him, particularly since Pillow had problems with him when they were younger?”

  “I knew his mother, a remarkable woman. Old-time Maori lady. She helped me when no one else cared. That’s all. When Tane was released from prison I offered him a job as a sheep musterer. Low pay, hard work, but he never once complained. Promoted him after a few years and rely on him totally now. But I worry he’ll leave. He’s a fine man in the prime of li
fe and you may have noticed that females of the human variety aren’t too plentiful here.”

  Esme knelt and gently pushed aside a bouquet of waxy leaves. “These are my swedes. I guess in the states you call them rutabagas or turnips. Our winters are too bleak for most other vegetables. Here”—she pulled one from the hard, dry ground—“try one. The sheep love them as much as humans.”

  It was sweeter and milder than a turnip.

  The golden leaves of the beech trees shimmered in the breeze coming off the mountains. I thought of Aspen and the glorious time Carol and I had climbing the Maroon Bells in the September before her death.

  “Do you ever get lonely up here, Esme?” I asked impulsively.

  “Too busy.”

  Then, as if to change the subject, she pointed east to the meadow where a herd of merino sheep were grazing. “Anyone who says those animals are dumb doesn’t know them. They’re deliberately uncooperative sometimes, as you would be at the bottom of the food predator chain, but they’re not stupid.”

  “How’d you come to own this place?”

  “Ivo bought it for me. I don’t know if he meant it as punishment or to help in my rehabilitation. At first, the work nearly broke me, but I eventually got the hang of it. I quit drinking and learned to skin possum as well as shear sheep. It’s getting tougher to hang on, though.”

  She stooped to pull a weed, shook the soil off it, and got back up. She fiddled with one of her braids.

  “The long downturn in sheep prices has made it hard to survive. Nearly put me under last year, forcing me to take on off-station jobs. I work down at the library in Glenorchy part-time, take in guests in the summer, and sell my paintings at a gallery in Queenstown. In the last six years I’ve been beyond break-even once, but I’ll never quit. This place has my heart.”

  It sounded like high-station ranching and the used-book business had a great deal in common.

  “How much livestock do you have?”

  “I run a hundred merinos and twenty cattle on two hundred acres. Besides Tane, I’ve five musterers and a couple of packmen. The snows have come early and already they’re snow-raking in the high basins, struggling to get the sheep down where the food is. In summer the stock grazes on extensive tracts of tussock meadow. It’s hard to keep control over the weeds and pests, but I’m keeping it natural that way. It’s the only way to give the native plants and critters a chance.”